The greatest chefs can spend a lifetime learning how to become better at what they do. But there are a few basic rules one should follow no matter your level of experience, and those same rules apply to gardening:

Read the label/recipe

If you’ve ever tried to put together a piece of furniture without consulting the manual, you know how dangerous it can be to wing it. When it comes to gardening, it’s smart to read the back of the seed packet or the plant tag that comes with your seedlings, bushes, or trees. This will help you match the plants to your climate and site. And when you cook, it’s key to read a recipe all the way through. That way, you won’t discover that the pizza dough you started rolling close to dinnertime has to sit for a few hours, or that the butter for your cookies has to come to room temperature before you beat it with sugar.

Use the best ingredients

The number-one secret to a great garden is the soil. Starting with soil that’s dark, porous, and rich in microorganisms, like Nature’s Care Organic Garden Soil, supports your plants’ root systems and makes sure they have access to everything they need to survive: nutrients, water, and air. It drains the water so they don’t get soggy while retaining just enough moisture so they don’t dry out either. (If your soil’s too sandy, the water and nutrients are likely to drain away; if it contains a lot of clay, it can be too slow to drain.) In the kitchen, this translates to cooking with the freshest, best ingredients possible, whether they come from your backyard, the farmers’ market, or the grocery store. Even the most accomplished chefs couldn’t turn mealy, out-of-season tomatoes into a great sauce, but juicy, ripe ones can be delicious merely drizzled with olive oil and sprinkled with sea salt.

Lay everything out

In cooking, it’s called “mise en place,” a French phrase that means to put all your ingredients and tools in order before you start cooking so you’re not digging for a whisk when it comes time to emulsify something. Being organized in the kitchen helps ensure nothing gets overcooked or left out, and the concept is relevant to gardening too: Planning where to plant your fruits, vegetables, and herbs and determining how much room they’ll need and light they’ll get are key to having a healthy garden.

Don’t get too complicated

You wouldn’t attempt to make macarons or a soufflé the first time you tried cooking. Starting simple builds your confidence and promises a much higher likelihood of success, and this applies to your yard as well: If you start with just a few edible plants, you’ll be much less likely to get overwhelmed and give up on gardening altogether.

Keep tabs

Once you’ve planted your edible garden, you’ll need to water it; fertilize it; stake and train any plants that tend to sprawl or fall over; and manage weeds, pests, and diseases. It’s not hard, but it does take patience and continued care, just like turkey takes basting and roasted vegetables need to be flipped halfway through so they don’t burn.

Stick with what you want to cook

Buying crazy ingredients at the grocery store—think tapioca pearls or Jerusalem artichokes—that you have no idea how to cook is a recipe for waste, since you’re not likely to prepare something that requires a lot of know-how to pull of. And planting the wrong things for the way you eat can also backfire. For example, it’s difficult to make pumpkin puree for pies or pudding from fresh pumpkin, so don’t plant the gourds if you don’t have a plan for them that doesn’t involve dessert. And certain plants, like zucchini, tend to produce bumper crops, so if you’re not a huge squash lover, you might want to choose something else.